[00:00:04.810] – Jingle

Selling doesn’t help, but helping sells. You are listening to Helping Sells Radio brought to you by Service Rocket Media.

[00:00:19.830] – Bill Cushard

Welcome to Helping Sells Radio, the enterprise software podcast you need in your life, I am your host, Bill Cushard. I want to thank you for joining us today. If you’re a long time listener, thank you for listening. It means so much to me that you spend this kind of time with us. And make no mistake, I do this for you, our longtime listeners. And if you’re new, thanks for checking us out. Here’s what you need to know. We are not your average technology podcast. We focus on authentic conversations with technology professionals who live and work all over the customer journey from marketing to customer success. And we try to unpack innovative ways that people are taking a helpful approach with customers. We hardly ever edit the show. We like to imagine that you are out there joining in on a conversation between a couple of friends because that’s what we think you want to be a part of and not some boring interview show with canned questions and scripted responses. That is not how we roll on Helping Sells Radio. So with that said on with the show, let’s do this. So my guest today is Mark Donnigan, and he designs and executes marketing playbooks. You know what? Mark when we get into this, I’m going to ask you what a playbook is versus a process. When did we start talking about playbooks?

[00:01:38.400] – Mark Donnigan

Cool, cool.

[00:01:39.840] – Bill Cushard

Where you execute marketing playbooks that produce real business results for early and growth stage technology startup companies, which I know you’re out there listening. That’s you. With his 20 years of experience as a transformative B2B and enterprise marketing and business leader, Mark understands how to succeed in today’s winner take all market. It really is a winner take all market. So I’m glad to have you, Mark. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:07.350] – Mark Donnigan

Hey, thanks, Bill. And you know, the Hilton lobby is a great place to have a drink, you know, as the conference is winding down. And, you know, we’re just we’re just talking about marketing. And, yeah, this is great. I love it. I love that conversational, you know, focus for your for your show.

[00:02:26.370] – Bill Cushard

OK, we are at the bar at the Hilton with the conferences.

[00:02:29.190] – Mark Donnigan

There we go.

[00:02:29.820] – Bill Cushard

And our flights don’t leave for three hours.

[00:02:32.450] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah. We’re comparing notes, you know.

[00:02:35.340] – Bill Cushard

Exactly right. That’s what the show is. OK, so there’s a couple of things I want to talk to you about, Mark. And, you know, you talk a lot about go to market engineering, right?

[00:02:47.547] – Mark Donnigan

Yes.

[00:02:47.700] – Bill Cushard

The whole go to market process. But then there’s another layer. You talk about that demand generation or marketing or this go to market, and it really is the responsibility of everyone in the company and not just marketing. And the reason why I want to talk about that is just three episodes ago, I talked to Rob Dhaliwal from Crane Ventures in London, and he wrote a Medium article about there is no post sale and presale, just the next sale.

[00:03:18.450] – Mark Donnigan

That’s right.

[00:03:19.290] – Bill Cushard

So I think there’s there are some intersections here. This is exciting. I wanna talk to you about it.

[00:03:26.160] – Mark Donnigan

Well, let’s do it. You know, I really think of everything that we do. We talk about like sales motions and marketing motions. Right. And that’s just sort of a fancy I don’t know, you know, hip way to talk about some sort of a process. Usually, you know, our sales motion as this hour.

[00:03:44.090] – Bill Cushard

I have to interrupt, because we used to have processes, then we had playbooks. But playbooks didn’t last very long. We went right to motions.

[00:03:49.980] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah, we went right to we went right to motions.

[00:03:52.290] – Bill Cushard

Well, no –

[00:03:54.120] – Mark Donnigan

-Playbooks are important and we’ll talk about that.

[00:03:56.070] – Bill Cushard

Okay.

[00:03:56.070] – Mark Donnigan

But yeah, but here’s what’s cool, you know, about what you just said. And I think it really sets the tone for for where I believe that the integration of sales and marketing and demand again and how not only are we all marketers and sellers, but it’s a continuous flywheel. You know, and that motion is something that certainly there’s all of our businesses. We have some sort of you know, you might think of them as gates or you can use the word process, whatever. Let’s not get hung up on the terminology. But in the world that I’m in, for example, where it’s some very high technology software that has to go through an evaluation period, you know, it’s well known that there’s these gates that a buyer has to go through before they’re going to buy. Now, they may go through them in different orders. They may you know, some may spend more time or less time on certain parts, but they have to complete this. But as we look at this integration of just the sales process, marketing is it when that sale is done, a motion kind of stops, right? Hey, we got the P.O. Cool. You know, maybe we visit this in a year when the renewable, you know, when the renewal period comes back up. But basically it’s like, hey, we’re done, we’re on to the next one. And you know, how many Maxwells cycles do we have in the pipeline? And, you know, it’s all that kind of stuff, but that just isn’t the way that the world really works today. If you want to build a high scale, hyperscale kind of business is that it’s a flywheel. And now that flywheel, you know, in some businesses, that flywheel could be add-on services, it might be expansion revenue. You know, it could be very clear what that is. In others, it’s going to look different. But the point is, is that we need to be focused on a flywheel.

[00:05:52.110] – Bill Cushard

So. But I still have to go back and get the next sale, so I get the P.O and I still have to move on to the next one. So –

[00:06:01.020] – Mark Donnigan

Absolutely.

[00:06:01.860] – Bill Cushard

Sometimes the detail matters. It’s like, OK.

[00:06:04.470] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah, that sounds good, right? Yeah. Well, and this is where this is where the team focus does come into play. So, you know, I know that a lot of your audience are maybe focused on sort of the customer success side, which is, you know, after the sale. And so that team, of course, then is able to because they’re tasked and, you know, the whole process is built in such a way that they can engage that customer. They can be involved, you know, even after that sale is completed. Obviously, an account executive, you know, is going to be doing some management of that customer. And depending on the size, you know, they may be in there and there’s, you know, a lot of expansion, revenue and whatever. So they’re kind of always engaged. But for a lot of us, you know, that account executives moved on to the next target, basically, and they’ve moved on. But the point is, is that as an organization and this is the integration of sales and marketing and customer success and product, it’s just we no longer can live in silos, you know, and we can’t just sort of say, hey, I’m the account executive on the account. I closed the deal. Awesome. I just got paid on that deal and now I’m on to the next one. And good luck. You know, I hope they renew, but that’s not my problem anymore. You know, like, that’s not the way to build a high scale business today.

[00:07:31.500] – Bill Cushard

So this reminds me of, on the one hand, you do have to specialize, on the other hand, you can’t work in a silo. And it reminds me of something Christopher Lockhead said –

[00:07:44.440] – Mark Donnigan

I love Christopher.

[00:07:46.420] – Bill Cushard

OK, so he talked about when he was a CMO.

[00:07:49.420] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah.

[00:07:49.810] – Bill Cushard

His personal goal was to be the most requested exec in a sales call. Yeah, he’s the marketing guy. So, yeah, what’s he doing in the sales call? But that was a personal goal of his.

[00:08:01.330] – Mark Donnigan

Absolutely 100 percent. And we’re going to go on some really cool tangents. I can tell already, Bill.

[00:08:08.470] – Bill Cushard

Yeah, see.

[00:08:09.190] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah, I see, this is great. Well, it’s a conversation, you know, let’s see. I just started my gin and tonic. I don’t know. You’re old fashioned, you know? Looks like it needs some refreshing there.

[00:08:19.450] – Bill Cushard

That’s right.

[00:08:22.000] – Mark Donnigan

So. So, yeah, I have a you know, I have a very strong belief. There’s a lot of talk, especially in the marketing world, about the tenure of the CMO. You know, that’s the shortest in the C suite and all this stuff. Right. And that sort of implies, you know, you can hear that and you can say, wow, that’s really terrible. I mean, these people must you know, they’re not able to keep their jobs. So they must be failing in some way or, you know, maybe they’re just in over their head or they’re not qualified or, you know, it’s easy to kind of go down that sort of look at the person, you know, and sort of say, hey, the person failed. In my observation as I’ve interacted with people that I’ve known or just kind of from an arm’s length, you know, distance watched people who have you know, kind of suffered this dilemma churning through. I have to say, I don’t think I’ve seen anybody who was incompetent, who wasn’t incredibly skilled, who wasn’t 100 percent qualified to be in that role. I really haven’t. I’m not saying, you know, because I don’t know everybody. So I’m not saying there isn’t somebody out there who has a fancy title who shouldn’t be there. Of course, in every position there probably is. But I’m just saying that my general observation is, is that this quote unquote failure in the CMO chair is because of things like they just don’t understand what the job is today. So maybe they’re doubling down. Maybe they’re incredible managers. And, boy, they really know how to motivate and lead a 50, 100, a 200 person team. And guess what? There is somebody that has to do that. You know, if you have 100 people working in marketing, well, somebody needs, you know, needs to be able to keep it running. The thing is, is that actually today is not the CMO’s job. And that’s why, you know, you’re seeing like CMO chief of staff’s and you’re seeing, you know, in some cases the VP of Marketing might be kind of that more managerial type person. The CMO is the tip of the spear for the company that is out in the market that should be spending most of their time in the market. If the CMO is not spending, you know, maybe at least half of their time. Now, I know, you know, with COVID, the world we’re in now, that looks different. But you still do it today. If the CMO is not in front of the customer; isn’t at industry events, isn’t speaking, isn’t representing, isn’t a representative of the ecosystem, they’re not going to be able to bring back to their organization the correct strategies, the correct language that the industry wants to hear that 100 person team can build the right materials on, the right messaging. They can be in the right channels, et cetera, to be able to reach the customer. And so we talk about like Christopher Lockhead and I know very well his comment and I have the exact same strategy and I just fell into it. It’s not because I, but I started in sales, so I naturally kind of gravitated there. But I was sort of a little bit proud of the fact that every once in a while I’d get someone say, wow, you know, I was a little afraid of having you in the meeting because you’ve got marketing in your title. But, you know, but it was really great. And while it was, you know, please join us again and that sort of thing. And it wasn’t because of me. I’m not saying that because of me, but it’s because I was able to contribute to the sales process that then allowed me to be able to come back and bring valuable feedback to whatever I was involved in on the marketing side and whatever we’re doing, initiatives, et cetera. And then that drives the business forward. And at the end of the day, that’s all that matters. Christopher also says ring the cash register, ring the cash register. That’s the job, so.

[00:12:16.090] – Bill Cushard

You know, you talk about this, you talk about that the marketing head needs to be a sales person or needs to get sales or be part of the sales process.

[00:12:26.720] – Mark Donnigan

I believe in that. Yes.

[00:12:28.340] – Bill Cushard

Right. You know, be involved in that. And I take it a step further and think, well, that marketing role needs to be about customers. So…

[00:12:37.970] – Mark Donnigan

That’s right.

[00:12:38.920] – Bill Cushard

Not just, hey, we delivered the right pipeline growth or leads. We find the ideal customers. We work, we pull the customer success teams in to figure out who the best ideal whatever and I don’t know, usher them through the funnel, whatever that means. I don’t know.

[00:12:56.840] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah, that’s right. You know, now here’s here’s another major revelation that I’m still a little surprised that not everyone in B2B has gotten this memo. But, you know, we’ll start with your listeners Bill, because we’ll make sure they get this memo. The buyer is in control.

[00:13:15.890] – Bill Cushard

Yeah.

[00:13:16.190] – Mark Donnigan

No longer is the vendor in control. Now, for those of us who, you know, shall we say, have had a few years under our belts. We can remember a time when especially in, you know, maybe really technical sales processes, the vendor was in control. I mean, you you know, like the customer almost had to kind of come to you and say, oh, we’d be so honored if you would meet with us so you could tell us about your product. You know, you remember, like 20 years ago, there were certain industries and certain segments where, you know, the the seller was absolutely in control. But today, I think even in those, you know, highly technical, very complex selling environments because of the Internet, because of just so much information that’s available and because of buyers self organizing, which is something else that we should talk about, because this is a very interesting phenomenon. And I have a case study on this, that I’ll share if you’d like. But because of this now, we are not in control as marketers. We’re not even really in control as salespeople. And so our job is to intersect the sales process. I mean, the buying journey, wherever our buyers are in the most, you know, compelling way possible. That’s what our job is. And how can I do that if I’m not out there, if I’m not talking to the buyers, to the customer? If I don’t, if I’m not hearing the little nuances about what they care about, what they’re thinking about, the trade shows they’re going to the events they’re attending, the the meet ups they go to? How can I do that?

[00:14:51.680] – Bill Cushard

Everyone listening to this is thinking, yeah, we do customer journey mapping, OK?

[00:14:58.820] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah.

[00:14:59.750] – Bill Cushard

And they know in their brain, like we do intellectually, that yeah. The buyer is in control, not us. And yet. When I start writing out the buyer, the customer journey, the buyer’s journey, of course I’m going to write it. They do this and then they do this and then they do this because I know.

[00:15:18.640] – Mark Donnigan

Sure.

[00:15:19.360] – Bill Cushard

So how do I go from I get that the buyer is in control, but when I write it out, I’m telling them what they’re going to do?

[00:15:28.930] – Mark Donnigan

Well, you know, yeah, it’s a great question. And I thought about this and a couple of years ago, I sort of changed my terminology a little bit. And I call them gates, you know, and I call them gates. And just for me, it’s helpful. I don’t know, maybe someone has a better, you know, analogy or a better way to think about it. But, you know, it’s like a gate where, you know, I don’t necessarily have to go through the first gate to get to the second gate. I could go through the second gate, but I have to go through every gate, you know, so I can’t skip a gate. But, you know, I might go through the third gate and then I go back to the first one that I go the second one, then I go to the fifth one. And, you know, I just kind of move around. And if you think about it that way, then you’re building your marketing plan. You’re building your content plan since, you know, everything now is digital. That’s the other thing is, I don’t use the word digital marketing, all marketing is digital. So, you know, so it’s sort of redundant. So when you’re building your content plan or you’re thinking about, you know, engaging at certain gates, you know, you’re just thinking about that gate. Hey, we know that that that a sale can never move forward unless the customer has gone through an evaluation. Here’s what an evaluation looks like for us. And here are all the questions that come out as part of this evaluation process. So let’s create a bunch of videos and let’s create, you know, some positioning papers and let’s create, you know, whatever the appropriate content is. And it’s for that gate. And then you can do some super, super cool things in terms of depending on how sophisticated your you know, your marketing automation platform is or if it is possible, because not all buying journeys are are are terribly complex. Most are, but not all. So there are some where you can, with reasonable confidence, say, hey, we know that our buyers are kind of hanging out in these primary areas, you know, therefore we can use the appropriate channels to intersect and then we can make sure that the content that is appropriate for each of these gates, you know, that it is easily found, can be easily found. And that’s, I think, the easiest way to sort of think about this, like, OK, the buyers in control, but now what? You know, just stop thinking about it as step one, step two, step three, step four. And just think of it as, hey, we’ve got these four major you know, it’s jobs to be done, right? Like Clayton Christensen. Yep. I love that. So that’s I think that’s a helpful way.

[00:18:13.220] – Bill Cushard

OK, so let’s, I think this is genius, Mark. So because, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a meeting where we’re doing a customer journey and we argue over. No, no, no, this step comes before that step. The step comes before that step.

[00:18:29.400] – Mark Donnigan

And it doesn’t matter!

[00:18:30.870] – Bill Cushard

Because it doesn’t matter. So I want to like what are some examples of gates? So you mentioned one like an evaluation process and evaluation thing? What’s another gate or two?

[00:18:42.480] – Mark Donnigan

Well, you know, I break this down at kind of at a macro level into sort of like, you know, we talk about the flywheel. Right?

[00:18:54.931] – Bill Cushard

Okay.

[00:18:54.940] – Mark Donnigan

So, if we’re talking about demand generation, you know, so let’s constrain the conversation because we, you know, we could kind of go all over the place here. But let’s talk about the job at demand generation. Hey, you know, I have a solution for the market. I’m trying to get people to know about it, you know, and therefore and then have the opportunity to sell it, to actually sell them. So the the very first, you know, sort of gate or really maybe job to be done would be – hey, I have to capture their attention. You know, and so capturing their attention is related to kind of the second one, which is I have to educate them on the point of view. And one of the biggest things that also has changed with the buyer being in control. Product marketing. Product marketing is still needed, by the way, totally believe in it. So, you know, anything I say that kind of sounds to the contrary. You know, make no mistake, we need product marketing. But it used to be that product marketing led because and in B2B. So we’re talking about B2B here, product marketing lead, because it was about features. It was about benefits. It was about price. It was about performance. It was you know, it was all those things, right? Now, all of that you can get on a homepage and somebody just doing a Google search. And especially if you’re in a somewhat established market, you know, there’s there’s maybe not a whole lot of uniqueness, like even just a junior person working for your customer can can can run a search and create a spreadsheet and say, hey, we’ve got 18 vendors that can do this. Here’s a matrix of how they compare. So that’s not very helpful if you have to compete in that space. So marketing is moved from, you know, features, benefits, that kind of stuff to point of view and point of view is problem centric. So what is the problem you solve? And what’s super interesting about this is that if you start talking about the problem you solve, even if you are in sort of a commoditized space or industry. So I don’t know, let’s see. Even just super simple, let’s use CRM. Because talking about commodity, you know, like yeah. I mean, Scott Brinker has, you know –

[00:21:21.000] – Bill Cushard

Thousands. That’s crazy.

[00:21:22.290] – Mark Donnigan

Oh, it’s crazy how many platforms are out there.

[00:21:25.650] – Bill Cushard

The logos are now in one point font.

[00:21:28.020] – Mark Donnigan

They’re like, yeah, it’s just it’s absolutely nuts. Right? So, but this is a really good illustration because we all can understand it as marketers. So CRM. Now at the end of the day, yes. You go to all their websites and, you know, 80 percent, 90 percent, maybe even 100 percent of the messaging is identical. You know, I mean, it’s identical. If you just stripped everything away, stripped the images and you just look at text, you could not tell the difference. So you say, well, wow. You know, how do I compete in that space? Well, what’s the problem you solve? Now, what if you’re not a CRM, but you are a patient happiness management system for dental offices? Now, I’m getting a little bit obtuse here. I totally get it, but I’m trying to make a point. And so you’re a patient or a guest maybe, you know to kind of really make this fufu. You’re a guest happiness management system for dental offices. And what your system does is you provide monthly automated hands off, you know, email contact so that, you know, the dentist can push out tips and how to care for your teeth. And, you know, and everyone can understand what I’m saying. This is a CRM and a marketing automation platform. Right? And yet, can you imagine the business that could be built if someone was to solve the problem? How do I build my dental office? So what’s a dentist looking for? You know, if we’re going to just continue with this analogy. You know, a dentist is not shopping for a CRM. No one’s shopping for a CRM. They’re shopping for a better way to engage with their customer. They have a problem. Hey, we know that we’re not staying in touch with our patients. We’re losing contact, that sort of thing. And so this is an example of how to maintain – um, are you hearing the?

[00:23:41.220] – Bill Cushard

The background noise like an airplane going through?

[00:23:43.130] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah, my yard guy just showed up. So.

[00:23:47.120] – Bill Cushard

Perfect. Perfect, great.

[00:23:49.130] – Mark Donnigan

And we were on a roll and you weren’t going to have to edit and I just ruined it.

[00:23:53.600] – Bill Cushard

Who says I have to edit now?!

[00:23:55.500] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah, yeah that’s right! Hey this is real life actually. Actually, it’s great. Yeah. So all right. Apologize to all the listeners there. So, so –

[00:24:05.720] – Bill Cushard

But the problem that we’re trying to, we have, there’s this problem in the world that we, what are you saying? We have to have some point of view.

[00:24:11.660] – Mark Donnigan

Point of view. So, yeah. And a point of view is a little bit, it’s different. It’s related to the problem, because if you don’t state the problem very clearly that you are solving, then you can’t have a point of view because the point of view says, hey, we believe that this thing that there’s this problem in the world, that it should not be there and that here’s how you solve it. Here’s how you solve it. So let’s go back to our dentist. You know, so, hey, we believe, you know, and it might be based on research or, you know, whatever. I’m sure, you know, nine out of ten, you know, Americans, you know, 18 to 54 or whatever, you know, don’t get their teeth cleaned regularly enough, you know, and that’s leading to, you know, this disease and that disease and this and that and whatever and all the bad things. Right? We believe that that should not be so. And we also believe that if if you had a very easy, low touch way to stay in touch with people that people actually, you know, they fundamentally, don’t want to lose their teeth, you know. But because it’s hard to kind of remind people and everybody’s busy, you know, and so we have created this solution, you know, this happiness, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah platform that you can use. It’s very simple to use. And then, you know, you go in to serve a little demo, like if it’s on a web page or whatever. But the whole point is, is that your stating a problem and you have a very clear point of view of how to solve that solution. OK? And then that leads then into where where you’re you’re engaging the market. So you start out and you’re just capturing their attention. And so capturing attention is is, you know, kind of the baseline for marketing. Right. Marketing and sales. Like whether, you know, if it’s sales, just picking up the phone, you know, trying to get someone to listen to you so you can get, you know, a meeting or you can make a presentation if it’s marketing, just getting someone to say, oh, that looks interesting, you know, and click on it and, you know, maybe read more, watch a video or whatever. And then and then you’re educating them. And this is the problem and then the point of view. And then now you’re engaging them. And this is where, you know, the other problem that that I think we can the trap that we can get into is, is is, hey, look at all the clicks I got. Look at all the likes I got. Look at all that. But but there isn’t real engagement behind it. Now, you do have to get a lot of clicks and in some cases, likes in order to get engagement. So I’m not saying even necessarily those things aren’t worth kind of looking at, just being aware of. But clearly, just because someone, you know, on LinkedIn saw your article, you know, or your post, you know, 4500 people saw, it doesn’t mean anybody took any action, you know. And so we have to engineer then a process and and build. And these are this is more tactics now, you know, around the engaged step, it’s more like tactics because, you know, it’s not just strategy. Like, OK, strategy is, you know, we need the right people to be engaging. It’s tactics. And then you get to convert where obviously now we’re you know, we’re saying, OK, now, you know, sign up for a free trial, you know, download the app. You know, whatever that step is. That might be the actual front end of the sales process or might still be kind of a pre sales. You know, if I have a freemium model, basically the moment they install my app, I haven’t finished. I just started because now I need them to start using it. Then I need them to pay, you know, and I’ve got probably multiple steps there. So when we look at, like these gates, there is, in the context, like go to market, we can apply kind of the same framework. I just outlined it. You know, you first you’re saying, hey, I’ve got to just capture their attention. If they’re not listening to me, not aware of me then you know –

[00:28:23.480] – Bill Cushard

All is lost.

[00:28:25.130] – Mark Donnigan

Educate, you know, point of view, problem, I have to engage them and then I have to convert them. But it’s a flywheel. And this is what I mean about the flywheels. So, like, let’s go to a freemium SaaS model. Let’s go back to our dentist. So so I’m actually a CRM vendor at the end of the day, but I’m presenting this as a, you know, patient, you know, happiness platform for dental, you know, for dentists, for, you know, dental offices. And so I might, I probably have some sort of a freemium way that I can offer something that that dentist or, you know, the office manager is going to say, hey, that’s that’s really interesting. But now I need to bring the process back around. So they say, wow, we really should unlock this email capability. That would be really cool. You know, we’re doing this thing on the side with MailChimp and 18 other solutions that are duct taped together. And half the time it doesn’t work. And I just got a new office manager and they don’t know how it works. And, you know, and so you have to go through the same process, though, and then you know, and then you get them into that first level paid program and then you’re going through. And this is what we started out by saying, is that, you know, sales and marketing today is a continuous. It’s a continuum. It’s just very, very few of us now. There are some of us that are probably working in environments where it’s kind of a one time sale and then it’s done, you know, unless they need to buy more of our widgets, you know, but nowadays with SaaS and, you know, with software licensing models, etc. it’s ongoing.

[00:30:01.550] – Bill Cushard

You know, this patient, this problem, the patient happiness solution, positioning or the problem. You’re sort of promoting the problem with the point of view on it. It’s exposing to me something that I have now decided is the biggest weakness in marketing. And that is, when marketing isn’t good, it’s because marketing people don’t get the customer. Meaning they don’t get the problem.

[00:30:26.040] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah.

[00:30:26.660] – Bill Cushard

I can’t tell you how many times, you know, I worked with the customer teams who get all the complaints, get all the problems or trying to fix things and to do the work arounds and doing all the things that make a customer happy. Right? They get the problem and then the marketing teams over here, making stuff on the website, writing down –

[00:30:47.330] – Mark Donnigan

– Executing on their on their campaign that was mapped out, you know, nine months ago. But hey, it’s on it’s on the roadmap. It’s on the plan. So that’s what we’re doing this month.

[00:30:57.600] – Bill Cushard

And the customer team looks at the website and says what is it? Oh, that’s all my customers say.

[00:31:03.140] – Mark Donnigan

Exactly.

[00:31:04.430] – Bill Cushard

What is it that? Back to your original kind of philosophy of demand is everyone’s business.

[00:31:11.750] – Mark Donnigan

Everyone. Yeah.

[00:31:13.130] – Bill Cushard

So how do you get the marketing engine to really get the customer?

[00:31:21.180] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah. Well, so this comes down to the individual level, you know, we talked about the CMOs job, but it’s not a stretch at all to say, hey, look, if the leader needs to really understand the market, if I’m in, IC on a marketing team, I probably should make that my business too. You know, and of course, I get it. You know, as an IC, you’re you’re probably not going to get to go into the field. You know, you may be lucky to join a few sales calls, but, you know, there’s just like the customer can learn all about you without needing you, you can go learn all about the industry. So, you know, take that, you know, take take take two hours a week, you know, a couple nights. You know, the kids are at a program or whatever, husband, wife’s gone, boyfriend, girlfriends, gone. Whatever. You got time, grab a glass of wine and just sit in front of Google and say, hey, I’m going to learn more about this industry that I’m in. You know, and now with everything being virtualized for conferences, there is zero excuse to not know about your industry. Yeah, almost everything is free. Or, you know, these conferences, it used to be, you know, 2000 bucks are like forty nine dollars now. And so I think it’s everyone’s responsibility because whether you are playing a small role in a very big team or you’re in a small team and you know, you’re you’re covering a lot of bases, having that domain knowledge and the ecosystem knowledge will make you better. You know, at a minimum, it’ll cause you to say, you know, it’s interesting. We’ve always said this on our website. But, you know, I just watched this panel discussion and they’re saying [crosstalk 00:33:12] , yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. And it’s the smallest tweaks in aggregate that have the big impact. There is no silver bullet, as we all know you know, I think everybody’s comfortable with that concept. There is no silver bullet. There is no one magic technique. There is no. But it’s all these small tweaks. And so in some cases, just a small adjustment to copy, changing, you know, a headline or a title, you know, changing an image. I look at so many websites, honestly, one of my biggest criticisms is images on websites. And I don’t mean because they’re stock and they look boring. I mean, you know, like you look at the image and you’re like, that is not how the customer actually looks or is using it or, you know, it’s not it’s totally inappropriate. And since everyone’s visual, you know, a lot of people, they just pick up and they have a sense about whether a solution can work for them or not. Just based on the graphics, based on the images, based on the photos, you know, so you can start there.

[00:34:19.410] – Bill Cushard

You know, when you when you when you tell that story, I think of, you know, the go to market playbooks that you talk about. Yeah. And I think of, you know, you say you really have to understand the ecosystem and the market. I think that maybe this is a mistake. Like understanding the market is what a marketer needs to do. But that seems too vague to me now. Yes, you have to get more precise to say, hey, why don’t you just, like, know our customers? Well, you can call customer A and like you said, like sometimes you can call them or go to the conferences and watch them speak up. It’s like if we’re more precise about it, just say, hey, just understand the customers we have and hear the words they use and then we’ll put those words on the website.

[00:34:59.370] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Exactly. But but that’s why I use the word very intentionally ecosystem. OK, because I think, you know, we we talk about the industry and and it cracks me up. You know, we need someone from the industry.

[00:35:15.630] – Bill Cushard

Yes.

[00:35:18.570] – Mark Donnigan

Really? Probably that person’s more out of touch than someone who someone who isn’t from the industry because they’re too involved. Yeah. Yeah. They’re too, you know, or they have a view that’s 15 years old and they just haven’t figured out yet that that, you know, the market’s moved on. An ecosystem is different than the industry. And it’s so critical to understand this for marketers. The industry is this huge, you know, huge thing of companies and customer, you know, vendors and customers and, you know, technology supply. You know, it’s it’s huge. Right? And it’s very, very sort of ill-defined. An ecosystem is the relationship, starting with me as a vendor and my customer. And then me as a vendor and the competitors around me, me as a vendor and the coopetition around me. So, you know, now there’s as much cooperators, you know, who, yeah, we technically do the same things, but in reality we can actually join together and, you know, it’s the customer and the customers customers or the customers user.

[00:36:34.690] – Bill Cushard

Yep. That’s right.

[00:36:35.030] – Mark Donnigan

You know, this is the ecosystem. And if you understand those relationships, then that’s how you can tailor your marketing messages. That’s how you can make sure that you are where the customer is in the buyer’s journey, in their journey, in their buying journey, so that you’re creating material that speaks to them. That’s relevant, that they say they lean forward rather than like, yeah, I don’t need to listen to those guys. You know, so that’s so the ecosystem is very important differentiation. And it’s different than the industry.

[00:37:10.280] – Bill Cushard

So. If I’m a marketer… Is it OK, so customer success people have this debate all the time. It’s like, do you want to hire someone who is a customer success expert? And know domain ecosystem industry knowledge or do you hire industry ecosystem person that has no customer sucess knowledge? Or something in the middle. Like the same thing with marketing right? It’s like if I’m selling a solution to solve a problem.

[00:37:41.530] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah.

[00:37:42.040] – Bill Cushard

Like the dentist example. Should the marketing be former dentists? Do they need to be? Maybe. Maybe not.

[00:37:48.440] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. I think the way to think about that is, is you need to index. Because what you’re talking about is are we looking for someone who has real domain experience, domain knowledge, they can speak the language. Now, ideally, we have the unicorn, right? You know, they’re an expert customer success, you know, absolutely. You know, best of breed and they’re, you know, an expert. But those are unicorns. And, yes, I guess unicorns exist, but let’s not go looking for unicorns. So what we’re talking about is, are we looking for someone who has the functional lot of experience and whatever the discipline is, the job is we need them to do so. You mentioned customer success, so let’s keep it there. So they’re highly skilled customer success, but they just came out of, you know, working in the automotive industry. OK? But we’re over here in, you know, marketing automation. All right. So now but they’re proven. You know, we vetted them, they know their stuff, but they don’t know anything about marketing automation platform. So now or, you know, vice versa. Wow. We’ve got someone who’s just, you know, maybe they used to be a program manager, product manager, whatever they know, marketing, automation, but they never actually really worked on the customer success side. Who do we hire? I think the best way to look at this, is the more technically sophisticated the sale is, then you need to lean towards the domain specific knowledge.

[00:39:20.470] – Bill Cushard

I see that. Yeah.

[00:39:21.610] – Mark Donnigan

Because at the end of the day, the customer is the sale is so complex that even if you have someone who’s, you know, you know, they’re learning, they’re growing, maybe they’re not that you know, they’re still trying to learn the job of customer success, let’s say. They are still going to excel in their job. They’re going to excel more because they’re going to be able to actually handle the requests and the needs and the and the knowledge, the information. And they’re going to be able to talk to the customer. In a way, the customer says, wow, this person gets me. At the end of the day, we all just want to feel that the other person we’re dealing with gets us. You know, if you think about it’s how relationships work, you know? And so if I’m a buyer and I have sophisticated questions, complicated questions and I’m posing these and I’m like, wow, this person really knows their stuff. I don’t care that, I don’t know, you know, and not that a buyer even thinks like, oh, are they doing a good job on customer success? They they don’t they don’t think about that. But you can have someone who’s a rock star customer success, but every time they’re kind of like, geez, Bill. You know, I’m not sure on that. I’ll get right back to you. Now, they really do get right back. Sometimes within 10 minutes. They’ve got an answer. But every time you’re feeling a sort of like, hey, this is a really nice guy or this is a really nice woman. I really like talking to her. But, you know, I kind of, you know, can we can we go direct to someone who can just get me the answer, you know?

[00:40:59.380] – Bill Cushard

Yeah.

[00:40:59.690] – Mark Donnigan

And so I think that’s the that’s you know, that’s the way to look at it. So the more sort of again, I hate to use the word, you know, commoditize, but, you know, I guess the more sort of flat that that the sales process and that the technology component is in the decision, then you know what? I would look for someone who’s got the chops. And hopefully they have enough knowledge, but they’ll be able to gain it quickly and, you know, and you’ll be good.

[00:41:29.800] – Bill Cushard

OK, good. So based on that. I want to bring this back to what I think is like the secret to this conversation, because it’s in your go to market gates, let’s say. One of them is, you got to have a point of view on this problem you’re solving and then tell the world to track the people that like that point of view. And I can’t think of a better way that marketing could be close to customers than to be able to do that well. Right? It’s almost like it’s one thing for me to say. Yep, we evangelize the problem. Right? And we put it on our website.

[00:42:08.180] – Mark Donnigan

That’s right. Yeah.

[00:42:08.890] – Bill Cushard

Problem is, you can’t sell anything.

[00:42:10.040] – Mark Donnigan

We produced a white paper. That’s the famous one. Hey, we have a white paper on that. Oh, I love it whenever I hear that, I’m just like –

[00:42:19.860] – Bill Cushard

– And the white paper is called: The problem you are having is a white paper, right?

[00:42:26.310] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah, exactly.

[00:42:27.390] – Bill Cushard

But it’s almost like, you know, proof of that understanding. The problem is that people say what you just said earlier is like, oh, my gosh, that white paper gets me.

[00:42:36.480] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:42:37.290] – Bill Cushard

Right? And so I just think, how do you, when you go into work with your clients –

[00:42:43.260] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah.

[00:42:43.620] – Bill Cushard

Do you have to help them think about this thing? Hey, you have to really get your customers to think about their problem and then like put that problem on the website.

[00:42:50.470] – Mark Donnigan

Hundred, 100 percent. And you know, some days I even I even sort of feel like, you know. I’m just asking questions and I’m even just sort of asking like I am not you know, I didn’t go off and, like, prep for weeks. And, you know, and do a whole bunch of study, like I was preparing for, like a court case or something, you know, like I just kind of I’m going in and like, hey, you know, so how does your customer deal with this, you know? Oh, well, they do this. Oh, really? Well, but what about this? Oh, we didn’t think about that. Huh. Well, you know, I see you have this white paper, hey, it’s really awesome. But, you know, it doesn’t seem to talk about this thing you just said. And then all of a sudden everybody is writing down, wow, we got to go change that. And so some of it, you know, I think there’s a lot of value in clearly you have to be able to break free from kind of the construct that many of us have grew up in, you know, and that is that, you know, sales was very siloed, marketing was very siloed. Everything was campaign based. It was, you know, everything kind of, you know, hey, look, this is really great in an MBA textbook, you know? But let me tell you, the real world is totally different. And so when someone breaks out of those of those sort of regimented approaches, then I think some of it is just having an outside perspective. And when you drop in to whether it’s, you know, a new company you’re just joining or you’re interviewing with or consulting with, you know, it is just being able to just kind of step in and just and you begin asking questions. And in some cases that that that opens up the strategy and the tactics around it, just sort of, they’re right in front of you because it’s super obvious what needs to be done. You know, now we can talk about. It’s very, very different when you have a startup, that’s starting with nothing. You know, and where it’s kind of like, hey, we’ve got a product, it’s going to save the world. You know, everybody is going to beat a path to our door. And we know that doesn’t happen, you know? So, you know, then you’re reinvent, you’re building the plane in the air, you know, from parts that, you know, you’re trying to scavenge from other airplanes that are in the air, you know, but that kind of a scenario.

[00:45:04.950] – Bill Cushard

But to argue against that. It feels to me like if it’s a startup that the founder has this burning reason for building the product. Right, stereotypical? I saw a problem in the world, I wanted to fix –

[00:45:18.890] – Mark Donnigan

– I wanna solve it.

[00:45:19.310] – Bill Cushard

You would think that they would be very clear on the problem they’re solving. And you’re laughing like that’s not true.

[00:45:26.810] – Mark Donnigan

You would think. Here’s a thing. And again, I really hate talking in generalities because, you know, but as the old saying goes, you know, it often proves the rule. Right? The fact that there is an exception proves that, you know, it’s exceptional. Many, especially in technology, midi founders have not spent any time in the market development side of building an enterprise. They’re engineers. Now before anybody says, oh, you know, sounds like he’s being critical. He’s all, they’re engineers. They don’t get sales marketing. Hang with me because that’s not what I’m saying. But I’m pointing out why you see such high failure rate of companies where later it’s determined that the tech, the solution worked. The tech was real. What they built actually worked. And so then you have to say, well, why did they fail? I mean, they actually did what they said they want to do. And the reason is, is that because the founders are technical and they come from product in most cases. And that’s candidly what you really want because you need someone who knows how to build product. You need someone who can hire an engineering team. You need someone you know. So so these are all really good things. But because of that, there’s some biases that they just inherently are kind of, you know, it’s inside them. The first one is, you know, our product is so amazing. We’re solving such a significant problem that the world’s going to beat a path to our door. You know, now, I’ve never heard anyone believe that, you know, like, you could just sort of by osmosis, people are just going to know about you. So these same people understand, like, hey, I’ve got to do something in marketing. I have to let the world know about this thing.

[00:47:11.060] – Bill Cushard

Yeah.

[00:47:11.270] – Mark Donnigan

But basically, you know. I do some PR, I put up a website, maybe I even put up a really, you know, kick butt website. You know, I run some videos on LinkedIn, I do some advertising. And, boy, I should be golden. Well, no. That’s you know, that’s not enough. And but but that’s not where the problem ends. The problem is, is that the reason why many of these companies we know the statistics, you know, 90, more than 90 percent, you know, roughly fail. Startups fail. The reason why they fail is not just because, you know, they assumed the world is going to beat a path to my door. I just need to, you know, do some PR and put up a website. That’s really not it. It’s because they really didn’t understand in a lot of cases, especially in B2B, how the customer needs or wants to consume their product. And this one is critical. This one is, I see this mistake over and over again. Making the assumption that because our technology is so amazing and we’re telling you what the best way to deploy it is, and here’s how you deploy it. Well, the operational, you know, integrity of a B2B enterprise is valued above everything else because guess what? They’re serving millions, tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of customers of users. And your solution may be absolutely brilliant. And they may say we really want this, but if it doesn’t fit into the operational model, if there’s something about how that product has to be used, it can’t be used. And so this is you know, you can argue and say, well, now we’re sort of talking about, we’re really talking about product. We’re not talking about go to market. We’re not talking about marketing. True. But if you don’t have someone in the company, probably the marketing head or someone who’s waking up every day and thinking about go to market, who knows the ecosystem, knows the customer who’s able to come back and say, hey, this is this is really great. But you know what? Our customers actually don’t want a SaaS solution. You know. They can’t you know, they don’t want a SaaS solution. And here’s why. Our assumption was wrong. And so we need to readjust how we’re going to take this product to market. But too many companies get stuck in. Well, we know better. Now, of course, you know, they’re not so brazen to say that. But that’s kind of what they’re saying, like, hey, we know better. The world is going to SaaS. Everything is moving from, you know, from CapEx to OpEx and, you know, and therefore, this is how you need to buy our solution and the customer is going no, actually, we need to run on Prem and we have really good reasons why. And geez, we’d love to use your solution, but I guess we can’t you know, so. So that’s and there’s a third one, though, I need to cover because it’s related. But these are super critical. The third one is, is they don’t actually understand who the real beneficiary of the solution is going to be. This one is a little tricky because even when you have domain knowledge, that can almost work against you because you can say, hey. I know the ecosystem, I know that, you know, this type of company or this department or this, you know, would really they would love this. They’ve been asking for this for years, you know? And so then you go build a solution, you take it to them and they don’t jump up and down and hug you and kiss you and write you big PO’s. And you’re like, what happened? Well, what happened was, was that the real beneficiary wasn’t understood. And either, we didn’t get to them to tell them that we have something or we just misunderstood what the value of our solution was. So we were talking to the beneficiary and they went, oh, yeah, that’s cool. But, you know, we have so many other priorities. There’s other areas in our business that we can improve operations or we can, you know, we can improve our technical excellence. And this one just doesn’t kind of make the cut.

[00:51:28.220] – Bill Cushard

So let me ask you, let me follow up on that. Because how is that different then, how is that related to? The economic buyer –

[00:51:36.940] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah. –

[00:51:37.270] – Bill Cushard

– Is one role for your product. And then they buy it and then they hand it off to another team that they have to implement it. Then another team has to actually use it, so you’re like three beneficiaries down the chain.

[00:51:49.420] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah.

[00:51:49.790] – Bill Cushard

And even though the CEO wants it and bought it, the end user is sat there going, what do you mean? I already have sticky notes. What do I need this thing for?

[00:51:57.220] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me tell you the way the B2B sale is working now, unfortunately, is and this is why sales teams in some cases are really struggling. The old days of, you know, I have a relationship and because that relationship and wining and dining and, you know, secrets that I can tell that I won’t and all that I can get this person, you know, who holds the keys to make a decision. Those days are gone. They are gone. And no longer does the CEO or the CFO or the CTO buy something. It’s a subject matter expert who ultimately does not hold the budget, who doesn’t even have the authority to say yes or no. But they I mean, they don’t have the authority to say yes. They 100 percent have the authority to say no.

[00:52:50.266] – Bill Cushard

Ah, yeah, very true.

[00:52:51.180] – Mark Donnigan

A hundred percent. And and so, again, as as products are becoming technically more sophisticated, what what I am seeing very clearly is and again, there’s exceptions. Right? So I’m sure there’s someone out there listening right now who’s gonna be like, I don’t know, Mark, I can tell you about, you know. Yes, there are exceptions to what I’m saying and what you know. But what’s happening is, is that the sale is getting so complex that the old days of the CEO, the the the, you know, the CFO, the CTO, you know, the C Suite, basically buying it and then top down saying, OK, now go implement this. This is our Q4 priority. You know, make sure this gets implemented. Those are gone. Now, the sales conversation may originate certainly at the CFO, CTO, et cetera, but it’s going to quickly go all the way down to the implementors. And the implementors, again, have that pretty much carte blanche power to say, you know, you know, yes, we and here’s how they kill it. You know, yes, we can do that. It’ll take about nine months, maybe twelve months to implement. Do you want us to bump these three other projects? Now, the three projects they named, they happen to know, are mission critical, high focus, high –

[00:54:10.800] – Bill Cushard

– Yeah, everything’s a priority.

[00:54:12.360] – Mark Donnigan

Absolutely. So then a CTO/CFO whatever says, oh, wow, not really? Are you sure? Can we get a can we get a, you know, a contractor to do it? Can we you know, can we get the company to help us? Can we you know? Whatever. Well you know, yeah. But we’re still gonna have to bump these other things down. Well OK, let’s put it off and then boom, the whole thing is killed. And so this is why, you know, this is where the complexity from a marketing and from just a customer engagement, a marketing engagement perspective comes in because now it’s not sufficient to just talk about how great our widget is. You know, now we have to we have to explain, like, why should you maybe bump those three projects? Because this is so critical, you know, but unfortunately, we’re not able to just sort of walk into a meeting and give that presentation. Not always. Rarely, actually. Almost never. So how do but how do we communicate that? And that’s where the challenge is in marketing today for B2B. Again, we’re talking about more technically complex you know, sales motions and buyer journeys, et cetera. But so many things are more complicated than they seem on the surface, you know. So.

[00:55:30.660] – Bill Cushard

SO, OK, Mark, I’ll get you out of here on this. If you’re, what’s the number one thing you have to help a software company like one of your clients overcome in how they’re thinking about going to market and understanding the problem with the customers? What’s, where do they get blocked?

[00:55:52.010] – Mark Donnigan

Well, you know, amazingly, I’ll try and answer this from a couple different directions. Because amazingly on the marketing side and I’m talking now, you know, let’s assume someone’s already in market. You know, they have revenue, they’re in market. You know, so they’re not just starting from, hey, you know, I’ve got my thing now. How do I sell it? Amazingly, from a marketing perspective, I find consistency and clear message is is the is the is just the biggest. And I use the word very intentionally, consistency and clarity, you know, consistency and clear message. It’s not, I rarely find that somebody, you know, isn’t saying the right things. You know, they’re saying the right things. But each time they talk, it’s with a different, you know, sort of like dialect. You know, it’s like it’s said differently.

[00:56:49.070] – Bill Cushard

Yeah.

[00:56:49.550] – Mark Donnigan

And that just contributes to a lack of clarity. And any time we’re not clear, our customers are going to be confused. And I also find that for more engineering driven organizations, this is a huge pitfall because you’re naturally dealing with very smart people. And I’ve literally had people say in so many words, you know, I’ve never had someone actually say this, but kind of like, hey, is the customer stupid? Like, they don’t understand that this is the same as this other thing, you know, kind of like I mean. I mean, come on. Do they not do they not know English? Do they not? You know, it’s almost like and I have to point out that, you know, look, it’s not our – it’s our job to make it so, so, so easy for someone to just quickly scan, you know, whatever it is. Our home page are, you know, the email we sent out, the LinkedIn ad, you know, whatever it is that we’re looking at, that they quickly get the one message, not the two messages, not the three messages. The one message, that’s it. So I would say that, you know, frankly, that is kind of the biggest one that I see. And and look, I’ll tell you, being completely, you know, self disclosing. I have dealt with that, I deal with that all the time. Both, you know, companies I’m engaged with now, companies I’ve engaged with in the past. So this isn’t just like, hey, I come in and I fix all this, like I have to combat against this. Right? Messages just kind of getting out of sync. So there’s that. On the on more of the sales side, you know, the field for those who are in the field, you know, selling and driving revenue. I really think that it’s it’s a lack of, I want to say ecosystem knowledge, but it’s a little bit different than that. Because I find that, again, oftentimes the sellers, the people who are in the field or talking to customers every day, they actually understand the buzzwords. They understand, you know, they actually kind of know, you know, what everybody is doing. But it’s just a lack of understanding of what the customer’s needs really are.

[00:59:05.990] – Bill Cushard

Yeah.

[00:59:05.990] – Mark Donnigan

And that requires kind of a next level of of of sort of analysis, because you can take it in cerebrally and you can say, oh, yes, they need to, start rattling off all the three letter acronyms. Oh, yeah. Well, those guys, they need this and they need that. Oh yeah. Oh, they always use this, you know. But then it’s kind of like, OK, so we bring that to them. But now, you know what if we find out that in eighteen months they’re planning to pivot to an entirely new architecture? Oh, we didn’t think about that. Well, maybe we better, you know, like, you know, so there’s kind of that next level. And so what ends up happening is sales processes get hung up, sometimes go sideways, sometimes go dark. And everybody thinks, oh yeah, they just decided to go a different way. And then when you start to really go in and do a postmortem, you know, which is always good to do, I’m a huge fan of, you know, whether it’s a real formal process or kind of informal, like what did we get wrong? You know, why do we miss it? And almost every time you get in and you find out, you know what, they were saying one thing, but we failed to, like, go deeper. Or we failed to understand what was behind what they were really saying. And of course, in eighteen months, they’re transitioning to a whole new architecture. No wonder they didn’t buy our thing. You know, because they’re sitting here at the end of the day saying, yeah, we could get benefit, but in eighteen months we’re going to scrap it all. So let’s just wait. And they didn’t take action, you know so.

[01:00:33.620] – Bill Cushard

Well, Mark, thank you. That was clarity and consistency.

[01:00:38.480] – Mark Donnigan

Well, thanks Bill.

[01:00:39.110] – Bill Cushard

Thanks for being on the show. If people want to learn more about you and your work, where can they find you?

[01:00:45.830] – Mark Donnigan

They can go to my website is growthstage.marketing – so growthstage.marketing.

[01:00:54.800] – Bill Cushard

Very good.

[01:00:55.550] – Mark Donnigan

And I’m on LinkedIn very you know, my name –

[01:00:58.130] – Bill Cushard

– LinkedIn, too?

[01:00:58.130] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My name is, you know, not so common. It’s just, type in Mark Donnigan, you’ll find me.

[01:01:04.040] – Bill Cushard

That’s how I did it.

[01:01:05.160] – Mark Donnigan

Yeah, yeah.

[01:01:06.440] – Bill Cushard

I’ll put a link to those two things in the shoutouts so everyone can find you. So thanks for being on the show, Mark.

[01:01:11.030] – Mark Donnigan

Well, thanks again, Bill.

[01:01:13.130] – Bill Cushard

OK, that’s it for us. This episode may be over, but we can’t continue the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #helpingsells. And on Twitter, I am @BillCush. Please, if you like the show or maybe you just like Mark or me just a little bit. Why don’t you go on over to Apple podcast or Spotify or Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review? You know, that really does mess with the algorithmic thinking and helps us spread the word about the show. And if you like this episode, why don’t you please share it with someone you love? Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Helping Sells Radio. Until next time.

[01:01:55.150] – Jingle

That was Helping Sells Radio. Thank you for listening.